Just Go
by Danae Dixon
Summary: Yet another "Threads"-inspired story, I'm sorry to say. O'Neill's thoughts on Carter when the end of the world is nigh, and also, when it isn't.


**Characters:** Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter

**Category: **Jack/Sam.

**Takes Place:** During _Threads (08.18)._

**Spoilers and References:** _Tin Man (01.18), Upgrades (04.03), Divide and Conquer (04.05), Frozen (06.04), Abyss (06.06), Grace (07.13), Zero Hour (08.04), Endgame (08.10), _all things RepliCarter and Anubis, as well as, obviously,_ Threads (08.18)._

**Summary: **Yet another "Threads"-inspired story, I'm sorry to say. O'Neill's thoughts on Carter when the end of the world is nigh, and also, when it isn't.

**Author's Note: **Was just watching "Threads" again – indeed, _again_ _again again_ again – and _needed_ to do this. Seriously, it was a physical need. I feel better, now. For the interested among you, never fear, I'll get back to the continuing saga of "Not a Terrible Reality" any day now...

**Disclaimer: **No copyright infringement blah blah blah. You know the drill. May contain nuts.

**Just Go**

It was official, Jack decided. Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter was too good for him.

If he hadn't already known it, he just had to look at this latest evidence to see the truth of that patently obvious fact.

Her father had just died, the world was about to end, she was the only one with any kind of idea of how to prevent it—and he, Brigadier General Jack "World's Biggest Ass" O'Neill, had just treated her like she was some kind of irritating lackey.

"Go, go. Just... go," he had ordered, with a flick of his hand, when she had proposed the one course of action that might save them all from annhilation. He heard the weary snarkiness in his voice as he interrupted her explanation, and regretted it instantly.

He took the look of long-suffering resentment she threw him, knowing he deserved it, and more. He nodded an acknowledgement, an apology, and she sped from the briefing room, heading straight for the dialling computer to enact her plan.

Her plan, such as it was: to dial up the Alpha Site, thereby blocking Anubis's ability to dial through to either Stargate and let loose the Dakara weapon, as he was planning to do via every other Gate in the network. The self-same Dakara weapon that had so recently saved them all from the Replicator menace, and was now set to destroy all life in the galaxy; home renovation, crazy half-Ascended Goa'uld-style.

As he moved to follow her, O'Neill reflected once more how unreasonably lucky they had been when using the same basic maneuver to wipe out the Replicators. All it would have taken was for one Stargate, out of the many thousands of Stargates, to be in use at the very instant that Carter and her father – and, God help them, Ba'al (no pun intended) – had activated the Ancient equivalent of subspace bug spray, and the Milky Way's insect infestation might still be wreaking havoc.

Jack had wanted to use the weapon again. And again, and again, and again, just to make sure Reese's resilient little toys didn't escape their fate and live to replicate another day. The last thing he wanted was to have to play exterminator to yet another plague of the creepy little critters. And then, after he had been satisfied that not a one of those nightmare-enducing pests had survived, he had wanted that damned deadly Dakara device destroyed, but good.

As usual, however, the Jaffa leaders had caused all kinds of fuss, claiming sovereignty over the weapon and all but threatening to unleash it on Earth themselves if Jack and the SGC didn't back off. _There_ was gratitude for ya! That would teach him to liberate an entire race of people from servitude to false, tackily-attired and cliché-riddled, gods.

Even Carter had been in on the act, siding with the Jaffa and arguing that they had to keep the machine intact, just in case there were still Replicators on the loose, but that using such an ancient device (again, Jack thought, no pun intended) without obvious need was to risk causing irrevocable damage. Breaking it, in other words.

She'd had a point, O'Neill supposed. But as far as he was concerned, breaking the toy after he was done using it was just about the best thing that could happen. This wasn't some expensive Christmas present. This was something that had the potential to end of all life, a big honkin' Doomsday Device; it was worse than the Death Star! But Carter had held firm, and in the end, he had let her have her way.

Sometimes he wished she wasn't so unbelievably smart. Sometimes he wished she didn't make so much sense. Sometimes he wished it was easier to say no to her. But he hadn't said no, and now, here they were, watching as the Stargate activated all on its own before the Chief had managed to encode even the first of the Alpha Site Gate's chevrons.

"Incoming wormhole!" Walter announced, somewhat redundantly. The iris whirled shut, without Jack having to say a word.

"That's not going to stop the energy from the weapon," Carter pointed out, also redundantly.

"If it _is_ the weapon." Jack found himself saying. Of _course_ it was the weapon, who was he trying to kid? Damn it, they _so_ should have blown that thing up, Jaffa or no Jaffa.

"No iris codes," Walter reported, sounding rattled, as the wormhole stabilised behind the trinium-infused, deceptively impenetrable protection of the iris.

"We're too late," Carter said, and the trained ear could detect the merest hint of panic in her voice. Well, he couldn't have that.

"Self-destruct," was his only, probably futile, suggestion.

"That's not going to destroy the Gate," Sam told him, in lecture-mode, "and, theoretically, there's only a remote chance it would disengage an active incoming—"

"Carter!" he over-rode her objections, harshly. He winced. Dammit, he was yelling at her now? Possibly their last moments together, and he was _yelling_ at her? What was _wrong _with him? But the self-destruct was the only thing they had left to try, and he would clutch at any straw if it meant saving their planet, and retaining at least _some_ human life in the galaxy. That was the very least their duty required of them.

"Carter," he said, much more calmly, but with a definite tone of "That's an order, Colonel," in his voice.

She rolled her eyes slightly, but obeyed, and they each stepped to a computer terminal, and set the sequence in motion.

The countdown began, and Jack glanced over at Carter. She met his gaze with those huge cobalt eyes, and Jack allowed himself a moment to drown in them. He wanted to say something, make a joke, see that flashing smile of hers just one more time, but nothing came to mind. He wished they were alone, wished he could throw years of training and discipline out the plexiglass viewing window and tell her... show her... say _something!_

He thought back to another time when it had seemed they were about to die, and there had been nothing he could do. To another time when the words "just go" had been uttered between them. In that case it had been Carter saying the words; or, rather, shouting them.

"_Sir, there's no time!"_

"_I'm not leaving you."_

"_Sir, just go!"_

"_No!"_

Leaving her behind, trapped on a half-built mothership that was about to explode, had been literally impossible for him. He'd tried to tell himself he would have felt the same if it had been Daniel stuck in there, or Teal'c. He'd tried to convince himself that he wouldn't have let _anyone_ die like that, trapped and alone.

But he knew the truth. It had been because _she _was stuck there that he wouldn't leave. And when he had screamed his defiance at her, and their eyes had locked through that stubborn forceshield, he had seen her fear for him, and her own feelings for him, along with a guilty realisation of why he refused to leave her... and right then there had been no power in the universe that could have made him turn away from her and just... go.

He had refused to give up then, and they had been lucky. Now he held silent, refusing to give up on a miracle now. He could only hope that their luck held. _But if it is gonna hold, it had better hurry up!_

The self-destruct counted down, and as it hit the 2 second mark, Jack had only one thought: Carter.

The self-destruct slowed, and as it stopped at 1.26, Jack had only one thought: Daniel.

He flicked an enquiring gaze at Carter, but she was too focused on the computer to notice.

"Wormhole disengaged," Walter said wonderingly, a few seconds later. A few seconds they would not have had if the self-destruct countdown hadn't paused when it had.

"What's going on?" Sam was patently confused, leaning in to look at the read-outs.

"I don't know. It must be some kind of system malfunction."

"That's impossible!" she protested. Jack hid a grin. Only Carter would protest about the failure of their computer systems, her mind clearly whirling with hypotheses and theories as to what might have happened, when, in fact, that very failure had just saved all their lives.

"Shut it off," he ordered, keeping his voice carefully businesslike. She took his meaning instantly, and disengaged the self-destruct. Jack was not about the take the chance that the countdown wouldn't start itself again, now that they were somehow – for the moment – safe from Anubis's attack.

Jack O'Neill thought ahead to a very difficult conversation he would shortly have on the red phone in his office.

"Yes, Mr. President, the galaxy was nearly rid of all life. Anubis's idea of a little redecorating. No, _we_ didn't stop it from happening. Not sure what did. Though I think my recently re-Ascended best friend probably had something to do with it."

He was going to have to work on that.

Carter again raised her eyes to his, and he met them briefly, but then hurriedly looked away, conscious of the many onlookers. He exhaled forcefully.

Well, _that _had been close. Too close.

He watched as Carter brushed Walter aside, checking and rechecking the self-destruct's diagnostic routine—at least, that was what he thought she was probably doing. Feeling his eyes upon her, she sent him a look upward through her eyelashes, a smile playing around her lips, and he was filled with a sudden, overwhelming sense of well-being. The world hadn't ended. The galaxy was safe... ish. And one day soon, before too many weeks had passed, he was going to march into the Oval Office and follow an excellent piece of advice he had received from the most unlikely of sources.

He was going to retire.

Kerry had been right to end things between them. He had known all along that he wasn't being fair to her, that she was merely a placeholder, a retaliation, almost. After all, Carter had Pete—_man, _he hated that guy—and when a beautiful, successful, intelligent and charming woman had made it clear she was interested in him, he had figured, hey, why not?

But he should have known better than to think he could pull the wool over the eyes of one of the CIA's top analysts. She had called him on his feelings for Carter, and he'd been too thrown by her insight to come up with a convincing denial.

"_Is the Air Force the only thing keeping you two apart? Rules and regulations? Because if it is, you're making a very big mistake." _

"_And you know what I should do?" _

It was a tacit admission of feelings he was not supposed to feel, the closest he had come to expressing the pesky emotion thing for a long time. And the last time, right after the whole stuck-behind-a-forceshield incident, he'd only said anything about it because he'd been forced to.

In case he hadn't thought it enough lately: damn Tok'ra.

But Kerry hadn't needed his words to know it was the truth, and she_ had _known what he should do. And even though a part of him wondered about her motivation for suggesting it—a civilian to run the SGC? Was she gunning for his job?—it suddenly seemed his only sane course of action. Hell, it wasn't as though the Stargate Program could do without Carter! So if one of them had to give it all up, better it be him than her.

How odd that his – now – ex-girlfriend should be the one to see his way clear to finally getting what it was he had really wanted all these years.

Jack remembered watching Kerry saunter out of his office, hips swaying. He had closed his eyes briefly, and allowed himself to feel the pain: the pain of being dumped, the pain of the reason he had been dumped, the pain at the thought of leaving the Earth and the SGC to their fate, just so he could be happy. Could he be more selfish?

He thought he'd done an okay – if by no means Hammond-worthy – job of running the base. Oh, sure, there'd been the odd close call: the virulent plant from P6J-908; the time the Stargate went missing; not killing that faux Carter that Fifth had created when she first turned up at their door. Yet another time he hadn't been able to say no to a certain tall, blonde subordinate. And look at what had just happened, because of it!

Oh, he didn't blame the actual Carter for wanting to think the best of Fifth's perverted version of herself. He'd been in the same situation after Harlan had created their Good Robot Usses, and Jack well-remembered his own hope that the action figure-him would actually keep his word and bury the Gate. He hadn't, of course. As they'd both known he wouldn't.

But if the Evil Sam incident, and now this most recent result of his bowing to her wishes, had shown him anything, it was that he and Carter working together at the SGC was a bad, bad idea. How would he ever know if he was going along with her plans because they made the most sense—although they often did—or because of how he felt about her? Because he didn't want to disappoint her?

The Fraternization Regulations, much as he had hated them over the years, were there for a reason, after all.

And,_ boy,_ had he wanted to break them, just the day before. After Kerry had dropped her shock grenade and left his office, he had gone straight down to Jacob's isolation room, just to check in. Carter was, as he had expected, up in the observation deck, watching as a parade of visiting Tok'ra paid their last respects to her father.

Their last respects... well, that had been no fun to think about. Damn that Selmak. Seriously, what was the good of a snake in the head if it didn't cure what ails ya? Really, they were pretty over-rated, all things considered. His own close encounter with that first-class bastard of an alleged Tok'ra, Kanan, may have cured him of the Ancient plague Aiyana had unleashed, but certainly hadn't done much for his chronically troublesome back and knees. _Stupid snake was too busy trying to save his girlfriend._

Entering the deck, Jack had sat down next to Carter, asking if she was okay, and her answer, the sheer honesty and innate goodness of her, had taken his breath away. She was watching her father die, a father to whom she had so recently become so close, and rather than railing against the symbiote inside her Dad, as Jack himself had done, for not being able to save his life, she was grateful to the thing for the extra years it had already given them.

"_C'mere." _

He had pulled her into his shoulder, and she had taken his hand, holding it to her cheek as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, right at that moment, it was. There were no regs, right then. There was no Pete, no Kerry. It was just the two of them, in the room, giving and receiving comfort.

"_Thank you, sir."_

"_For what?"_

Well, that had also been a familiar refrain. She was always thanking him, and he could never understand why. Even after she been missing on the Prometheus for four days, and had single-handedly saved herself, and the ship, all while suffering from a severe concussion, _she_ had thanked _him_. He, who hadn't been able to do a thing for her!

"_For being here for me."_

Well, that he could definitely do.

"_Always."_

It was a promise. And as she raised emotion-filled eyes to his, he knew she accepted it.

It was then that the Tok'ra with Jacob had looked up at them significantly, and Jack had realised that the final goodbye must be near. Jack's own grief had threatened to consume him, but watching Jacob lying there, with Carter kissing him on the head so gently, almost reverently, he had also felt a strange pang of envy. Jacob had looked up at his daughter and said "I love you," right before he died. Jack could no longer count the number of times he had been close to death, Carter at his side, yet those three words had always remained unsaid.

Which is how Jack knew that he had never once been truly certain that it was all over for them. In all the many, many close calls, even when death had seemed unavoidable, even when the end had seemed inevitable, he knew he had not really believed, in his gut, that there was no way out. That Carter wouldn't be able to perform some kind of science-y sorcery, or that Daniel wouldn't discover some esoteric text, or that Teal'c wouldn't punch someone really hard in the face, and get them—get him—out of whatever fresh hell had descended.

He knew he'd never given up hope because, no matter how close they had come to the brink, he had never told Sam Carter everything that he felt for her. He'd never pulled her close, waiting out the moments till their and/or their planet's destruction, wordlessly conveying all of the care and admiration and love he had for her, and all the regret he felt that she would never be his.

His Carter.

He smiled indulgently as she immersed herself even further in checking each component of the base's computer system, determined to discover some quantifiable reason why the self-destruct hadn't gone off on schedule. He didn't have the heart to tell her his Daniel theory. He didn't think she'd believe it, until she'd eliminated all other possibilities. That was his Carter. So much had happened, so much emotional turmoil and heart-wrenching terror, and yet here she was, tirelessly seeking out the answer to this particular conundrum, without even taking a moment to bask in the fact that they had all just witnessed the biggest Hail Mary save in the history of the galaxy. She geeked on, without even noticing that he was standing around uselessly, when he had close to a thousand things he should be doing right at that moment, just because he could not physically make himself leave her side.

Maybe it was because the almost dying, almost losing each other, had become so normal, so just-another-day-at-the-office. And maybe it was because, no matter how close they came to oblivion, once they were pulled back from that precipice, everything between them had always returned to the _status quo_. He would feel the terror of never seeing her again tear him to pieces, and yet once she was safe, he would remember all the reasons he had to stay out of her life, and go back to being merely her friend and CO. Or she would come close to saying something to him that would end in at least one of them being reassigned, and yet after whatever the crisis was that had precipitated it was over, she would go back to being merely his friend and subordinate.

This time, he wasn't going to let that happen. _This _time, he was going to mark the most recent occasion of their miraculous survival with something special, something that could change things between them forever.

Fishing! That was the thing. And this time, he wasn't taking no for an answer. She would _have_ to come. He'd make it an order! Better yet, he'd make it an outing for the whole team... assuming that Daniel returned to them at some point, which Jack was certainly assuming he would. She'd be left without any reason not to head up to his cabin with him, and indulge in a couple of long hard days of doing nothing at all. And they could talk there. Really... talk. And then maybe _she'd_ have a talk to Pete.

Jack rubbed his hands together, liking this plan. And, he vowed, he wouldn't let any of them be sidetracked by any petty save-the-word nonsense. He wouldn't allow unauthorised off-world activations or potential foothold situations or even incorrect deliveries of potatoes to the Mess to deter them from their trip to his Minnesotan paradise. There would be no worrying over what people might think, or what might be said, or which lines might be crossed.

He wouldn't allow any excuses. They had run out of excuses. This time, they would just... go.


End file.
